To refer to racial appearance as a social construct is to minimize its omnipresence. Race can be more accurately defined as a social fetter, a shackle to a specific tier in society. Progress may be visible on the surface, but this “progress” is intended to disguise remaining prejudice, a moral veil over our eyes so we can sleep at night with the little pat on the back, believing things are getting better for minorities. However, in actuality, the internal monologue, the interior bias ever-present in the back of the mind, is still sucking away at decolonization like a parasite.

Unless the collective human consciousness were able to shift gears on the programming that arose from centuries of racial/religious segregation, this psychological interpretation of “otherness” will continue to pervade our reality from the fringes to the center.

Race is not biological, there are no differences on a molecular level between someone of colored descent and someone considered “white”. This calls to question how, when we have all managed to become humans from what was once a speck of energy, we could possibly begin placing others on a hierarchy based on adaptive differences. It was incidental geographic and environmental responses that produced the physical differences we see as race. These differences which drive our society and color our social interactions, are a result of migration patterns of the first hominids.

Somewhere, the neurological leap, which produced the hegemonic idea of racial differences as a condemnation of “other”, occurred and shifted mankind from homo-sapiens working towards survival to beings whom compete with each other for fortune, power, and success. It was industrialization and century-long media insurgence that widened the gap of wealth – the oil, the stock market, the military. This could not have all occurred without slavery, the exploitation of Chinese rail workers, the military’s extravagant force, Japanese Internment, vile hatred of the Irish, WWII’s prevalent racial divides.

History continues in cycles of violence and racial/religious/divisions and nobody is able to be heard saying, “Wait, haven’t we been here before?” Those who say this are disregarded because the media is always putting a new spin on reality – largely falsified – so that we are too immersed in our new technology and pop culture to see the bigger picture.

The media has changed the way the world is perceived.

The concept of defining people by their otherness was deeply ingrained in society through both politics and the media – has laid the very foundation by which we distinguish anyone with the slightest difference from us. This could revolve around race, weight, gender, sexual orientation, drug use, fashion choices, &cetera; essentially anything can be used to create labels and place boxes around people. Media began in the early 20^th century by playing a large role in reinforcement of stereotypes and biased portrayals of other cultures.

Minorities went from being outright subjugated through labor, to a whole new level of psychological warfare – being caricaturized in the media. Early media portrayal of Asian culture, African Americans, and Hispanic/Latino culture, inter alia, were hyper-emphasized and fetishized for the most outlandish and “other” aspects of their culture and personhood. Stereotypes abound: heavily-made-up doll-faced seductive Japanese women clad in shortened traditional silk robes, African American gangsters, “ghetto” women in belly tops and hoop earrings, Latin scantily clad salsa dancers.

The media has put our own minds at war with our feelings – the constant and infinite flood of everything we should be doing, feeling, saying, or wanting. But it was not the Media’s fault, for humans were primed for its insurgence. Our minds are already constantly at war with our feelings, constantly imagining and mis-imagining the world around us. They deceive us and lead us astray and revoke our freedom. They trap us in archetypes and stereotypes and ideas of what everyone else wants us to be. Of what everyone else should be.

Our own minds strangle us. Our own thoughts poison us with bias.

We are all born with holes in us that can only be filled with human relationship and connection – voids that can only be filled with love. We all want to be loved and accepted. To feel a part of. To feel equal. It is especially hard to feel loved and accepted when what passes for ‘acceptable’ is marginalized and stereotyped, when people only feel comfortable surrounding themselves with a specific ‘safe’ set of characteristics.

The key is to simplify. Instead of building walls between someone due to their myriad differences, focus your energy on the infinite basic similarities. We are all human. We have felt pain. We have felt loss. We are in pursuit of some form of success or betterment. We are trying to seek security and happiness. We are playing the same game at the same time – trying to find money, success, relationships, purpose. We are trying to live another day.

When these fundamental concepts remain true, why, then, do we focus all our energy on the flimsy physical concepts? I repeat: race, religions, class, gender. The list goes on – but why? Why are these fracking at the center of the universe and being used to fraction our society – continually dividing it across fabricated lines.

This previous month, I have seen the deep divisions in this country heighten in their prevalence. There has been one half of the country protesting in a plethora of ways, and the other half calling them crybabies for it. Facebook fights break out not only over political preference; no, they have descended into an argument for one’s own humanity. The left sees the right as idiots. The right sees the left as idealistic children. It is all a political boxing match, and the breeding ground for the most intense polarization I have witnessed and felt reverberated through my lifetime.

But in all this, nobody is truly being heard. Everyone is being immediately dismissed and labeled.

People continue to forsake relationships with someone as an individual based on vapid political ideologies. Friendships are being tested, insults running the moral gamut have elevated. Race, Gender Preference, and Political beliefs have morphed into an inextricable tie to one’s identity. Divides are chipping off into further splinters.

The intense civil unrest arising in the aftermath of the election has divided us so far that there is currently a vote re-count taking place, a petition with millions of signatures for California to secede the Union, numerous rowdy protests, and the undeniable fact that a large portion of the country no longer feels safe or valued. Everyone is so afraid. And many don’t want to acknowledge it.

The global mass echo this win has shouted across the walls of the world needs to be acknowledged. People are afraid we are about to enter an era of appeasement with Russia. That we are about to go Nuclear on ISIS. That Saudi Arabia is seconds away from stabbing us in the back. That North Korea is throwing the equivalent of a temper tantrum from being ignored. And now our brave leader, in charge of the nuclear codes, is Donald Trump.

Anyone who does not see the amount of fire in the air right now is wearing blackened shades.

But race aside, Russia aside, economy aside, religion aside – we are all human fucking beings. And we’re ripping each other apart. We are cruel to one another: in public, over the Internet, through the media. We categorize people by their worst mistake, dehumanize them for faults we have in ourselves. Everyone was upset Hillary was a liar, but who in their life has never lied? Understood we should hold our leader to a “higher standard”, but then where was that with Trump? He lied – but was less often fact checked. He has spoken freely about and allegedly sexually harassing women (I’m not getting sued for this article, so we’re sticking with allegedly) – and was defended under the guise that “Hillary has done worse things than Donald Trump has said”.

But what about his allegedly fraudulent university? What about the construction team he allegedly never paid? What about his alleged ties to the Italian Mob. But then Hillary was still seen as even more corrupt – her higher held-standard so clearly evident making this “crookedness” her downfall – no matter how little basis in factual reality it actually held. Please, go fact check and research at least one of her scandals and you’ll see that everyone in the media blew it up like a war drone in relation to its actual relativity. It is not shocking to me that Hillary failed as a candidate – not when she was being held to so high a standard that Trump’s teensie snaffooos didn’t do anything to hinder his ensuing presidency.

Both their candidacies brought out the absolute worst in people. It turned people against one another like the ding of a match bell. They became a reflection of the true divides thriving in our nation.

He is just one man, one human, and he began pouring hydrochloric acid on the bubbling pot of racial tension the very day he referred to Mexicans as rapists. He revealed the cracks in our society with every word he spoke. Hillary is one human – not a Satanist, not a corrupt criminal – just a woman who dedicated her life to backing the wrong horse in every possible way, and  was persecuted, for Bill’s mistakes and her own. Donald Trump’s defense after “Pussygate” was that Bill Clinton had done/said worse. She was held to her husband’s own idiocy – everything Bill did was on her shoulders as well, in addition to emails and Benghazi. She was faulted for getting Pneumonia. Like, this woman attended her political responsibility, and got sick, like all of us do, and she was considered weak for it. People wanted to jail her – for emails. I mean, we have one old guy typing his little thumbs away Twitter all day, and an old lady being held on trial for emails.

Both candidates and their infinite scandals did nothing to hinder polarization. The emotions were rising without the fact-checking to back up the statements circling around the media. Hardly anyone performed their own due diligence – they just turned these humans into omni-powerful gods and demons. It grew from “support” to “worship”. Trump became an enigma. He was on every screen, he got more free publicity than any other candidate on every news source, website, talk-show, even comedy specials. He gained that much free publicity because all these mediums were cognizant of his mere name’s money-making capacity. He filled our screens, he filled our lives – and it rippled outward into our daily existence. Everyone got political on social media, hell, the President-Elect threw constant coals in the flames by using Twitter, insulting nothing short of 140 people.

What a time to be alive. What a time to create divides.

Everyone is hungry, everyone is tired, everyone is fighting – against each other, against the norm, against ignorance, against racism – for something. It is only fair they are given the proper weapon for the fight – a voice. It is when the voice is denied, when masses are silenced and subjugated, that violence ascends. Everyone wants to be heard – to feel their worldview is accepted; that they matter. But people are being constantly denied out of foolishness – foolishness arising from the belief that one’s existence is more valuable than someone else’s. We are all humans – we all make mistakes, we all hurt, we all damage ourselves and others, we are all walking masses of anxiety and fear. It is time we really listen to one another, to what our brothers really need.

It isn’t more violence and hatred. Not more terror and retaliation. We need discourse and diplomacy. Cessation of dehumanization derived from differences. That is the only hope for redemption from all this blind hatred. It is a call for a dethroning of our tyrannical truths – a violent fall from the pedestals we place them on. It is time to clear our vision of the negativity pouring in from the corners and try to find the beauty in the world. It is time to put in the daily practice of being a positive force in the universe – because if we keep looking for darkness, it is all we are going to find. And that just isn’t fair to us, not when there is yet so much undiscovered light.